The Manawatu Herald. Tuesday, October 3, 1911. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 1051, 3 October 1911, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Tuesday, October 3, 1911. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Tripoli, the cause of the trouble between Italy and Turkey, is the last of the oversea dependencies to remain under direct Turkish rule as an integral part of the once vast Ottoman Empire. Tripoli was originally a Phoenician colony, afterwards falling under the sway ot Carthage, and becoming dependent upon the fortunes of the latter ; later it became the sport of Tunis, of Sicily, aud of Spain, culminating in conquest by Turkey. Its history is chiefly one of piracy. Nearly every State in Europe, at some time or other, was obliged to send its fleets to bombard the capital, or enter into humiliating arrangements to pay tribute. In the early part of the nineteenth century the Turkish regency, owing to its piratical practices, twice became involved in wars with the United States of America, who had no difficulty in obtaining satisfaction ; and it was in the Tripolitan civil war, which followed soon after, that the Turks took the opportunity of reasserting their direct authority over the country, since which time it has been an integral part of the Empire. The whole population of Tripoli to-day is about one million and there exists no sort of native defence or navy. So that the only opposition which could arise to an Italian occupation would be from Turkey hersell, and, as the Auckland Herald recently showed, it is not easy to see in what way she could ever come to grips with Italy, a non-cotenni-nous country, even if she wished to fight. True there is a Turkish garrison of some 10,000 men, but, isolated from the Mother Country by hundreds ot miles of sea, it can only afford a slight resistance. If the Turks could reach Italy, they would give the Ilalians as big a drubbing as the late King Miuillk gave them in Abyssinia. For, as ? fighting man, the Turk is hard to beat. The Turk has been five hundred years in Europe, and he has developed no kind of capacity but that of a fighting man. He is wiry, tough, frugal, sober, capable of enduring privation, amenable to discipline, and, in his own way, religious enough to observe his fasts and say his

prayers, and die cheerfully, with a good hope that it is well with him beyond. By the sword he won his way into Europe, by the sword he retains his position, by the sword he will lose it. As the cat said to the fox in the fable, she only knew one trick to escape the dogs, but her device of getting up a tree was worth all Reynard’s hundred devices. So it is the Turk’s one talent—a calm, busi-ness-like readiness to kill or to be killed —which has made him a match for all the cleverer nations that surrounded him. His capacity in that line is his one talent. Nor has he ever let it remain hidden in a napkin. Whether with scimitar or repeating rifle, this one thing he does, and does it well. So inveterate is his devotion to his solitary art that when there was a revolution to be made, a Parliament to he created, and a Constitution •’ to be proclaimed, it was the army who did it. And if, as some fear, the Constitution is abolished and Parliament dissolved and despotic rule restored, it is the army that will be employed to do the job. As Mr W. T. Stead declared not long ago, first, last, and all the time, the Turkish Empire is the back garden of a barracks. But, unfortunately for Turkey, there is no present means of taking him from his barracks, except by land. Turkey is without a navy worthy of the name. Did it possess a decent size one, Italy would not now be conducting things in the high-handed and brutal mannei in which she is. From this there is another moral to be drawn.